'Black Panther' is here, and so, maybe, is a new day for Hollywood

Jah'Vell Carter, 12, of Asbury Park, has never "seen a black panther like this before!" The 12-year-old expressed his excitement to see "Black Panther." He is seeing it this weekend courtesy of the local McDonald's.
Austin Bogues, staff

The $200 million film, the first big-budget blockbuster built around a black superhero, has comic book fans and, particularly, African-Americans buzzing.

Chadwick Boseman in "Black Panther." The $200 million film, expected to be the first mainstream blockbuster built around a black superhero, has generated considerable buzz among African-Americans.(Photo: Matt Kennedy/Marvel Studios-Disney via AP)

And so — many fans are hoping — has a new age for moviegoers, and for Hollywood.

On one level, the huge excitement surrounding "Black Panther," opening Thursday night, is the usual buzz that comes with any new hella-cool Marvel superhero franchise — with the added intrigue of a more-awesome-than-usual "coming attractions" teaser.

But for African-American audiences, who make up 10 percent of comic book readers according to the geek culture website ICv2 but have been catered to only fitfully by Hollywood's hero industry, "Black Panther" feels like a game-changer.

"Every fan of comics will tell you Black Panther is basically Marvel’s Batman," said Davon’ta Holmes, 17, of Long Branch, a student at Long Branch High School. He'll be at "Black Panther" after his shift ends this weekend at the Monmouth Mall.

"I'm excited to see it," Holmes said. "This is one of the very few superhero movies starring a black character."

Black superheroes are not new, exactly. They have been supporting characters in other people's movies: Idris Elba as Heimdall in "Thor." Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury in the "Iron Man" movies. Anthony Mackie as Falcon, Captain America's sideklck. Black Panther himself has already appeared in one other film: "Captain America: Civil War."

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Several TV shows, including CW television's new "Black Lightning" and Netflix's "Luke Cage," have been testing these same waters. And black heroes have even starred in their own movies occasionally: "The Meteor Man" (1993), "Steel" (1997), "Catwoman" (2004) "Hancock" (2008) and, beginning in 1998, the "Blade" series.

These quirky comedies, low-budget exploitation films and niche TV shows nibbled around the edge of black superherodom. But "Black Panther" is the real thing: a $200 million mainstream blockbuster, with terrific word-of-mouth, aimed at a general audience that is poised to suck the oxygen out of every other movie in its opening weekend.

"People are talking it up," said Tony DeMarco, owner of A&S Comics in Teaneck. "I think it's going to be good. Black Panther was a favorite in the last 'Avengers' movie."

Not only is this a big-budget, mainstream movie centered on a black superhero (Chadwick Boseman, "42's" Jackie Robinson) with a largely black supporting cast (Lupita Nyong'o, Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker and Newark's Michael B. Jordan), it also has a black director-writer (Ryan Coogler, who made "Fruitvale Station" and "Creed") and a black co-writer, Joe Robert Cole. The hip-hop star Kendrick Lamar produced the soundtrack. And the film is based on a 52-year-old comic book that has some serious black cultural cred: Ta-Nehisi Coates (the author of "Between the World and Me") has been the head writer since 2016.

"It's the movie everybody's talking about, for sure," said Winston Meikle, 18, a senior at Teaneck High School. He'll be seeing it on Saturday along with 40 of his classmates. His mother, Daphne Meikle, co-president of the high school's Project Graduation (they sponsor non-alcoholic commencement celebrations) has booked a special 9:30 a.m. screening at Teaneck Cinemas as a fundraiser.

"This is a big deal, because it's our first big-screen [black] superhero that has all the powers of the other ones I love, like Superman," Daphne Meikle said. "It's very exciting."

A New York-based crowdfunding campaign, #BlackPantherChallenge, has been created to buy tickets for kids whose parents can't afford them. All over the country, fans — particularly African-American fans, including many families — are organizing viewing parties.

"This movie is all over the place," said Jonathan Gayles, professor of African-American studies at Georgia State University. "On social media, people are making all kinds of plans. They're going, 'What are you wearing to the premiere?' "

All kinds of things, it turns out. Many fans are planning to showcase their pride by dressing in traditional African-inspired garb, or wearing all-black or comic book T-shirts. Julio Morgan, 35, of Jackson, is planning to wear his orange and gold dashiki.

“It’s important because you know most of the movies that we see that star African-Americans, there’s been some positive ones, but we’ve never had a superhero like this,” said Morgan, director of operations for a McDonald’s in Neptune.

Each year during Black History Month, the McDonald's franchise sponsors a movie trip for local children. Guess which movie they'll be going to this year.

"I've never seen a superhero like him," said Jah’Vell Carter, 12, one of the kids who will be going on the McDonald's-sponsored trip, along with 170 from the Asbury Park-Neptune area. (He is bubbling with excitement in the video at the top of the story.)

"To have a role model like this, a superhero on the big screen, someone who looks like them … can open up a world of possibility," said Douglas Eagles, executive director of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Monmouth County, which serves underprivileged children (Jah'Vell is a member). "We really want to put our kids in front of that."

Douglas Eagles, executive director of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Monmouth County, with club member Jah’Vell Carter, 12,(Photo: Austin Bogues/APP.com)

This is one big-budget, action-filled, noise-and-effects popcorn movie that parents want their kids to see.

"It's a moment," Gayles said. "it's beyond a moment."

A shot of black pride

The saga of the African prince-turned-king T'Challa, heir to the throne of the incredibly wealthy (fictional) nation of Wakanda who adopts a form-fitting body suit to battle injustice, may also have a special significance at the current political moment.

To some, it's a sort of counter-narrative to the story being spun by the current president: of "shithole countries" and "huts" in Africa. This is a shot of black pride, straight across the bow of the alt-right.

"What I find interesting, it takes place in Africa, and there's a very strong African aesthetic," Winston Meikle said. "The dynamic of the character is also very interesting. He's a prince who becomes a king, and he's also a superhero."

Part of the significance of Black Panther, created by Marvel's Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (both white guys) in 1966 and generally credited as the first black comic book superhero, is that he's not African-American. He's African.

He escaped, as a result, some of the social baggage that came with some later heroes of color. Unlike Luke Cage, a.k.a. Power Man (he launched in 1972), he wasn't wrongly sentenced to prison, emerging with "steel-hard skin and strength beyond belief." Unlike Blade, the vampire slayer (1973), he wasn't born in a bordello.

Those characters, products of the blaxploitation era, were well-meaning efforts to make comic characters "real" and socially relevant. But they also had the effect of ghetto-izing black characters, in precisely the realm — comic book fantasy — where creators had license to create an alternate, better, reality. Kids who read these books seemed to be getting the message that the ghetto was the natural sphere of black heroes.

That's what makes Black Panther such a groundbreaker, says Gayles, who examined Black Panther and his brothers in tights in the 2012 documentary "White Scripts and Black Supermen: Black Masculinities in Comic Books."

"I think this movie represents a moment where black people, particularly young black people, are told they have a right to imagine," Gayles said.

Black Panther doesn't come from the 'hood. His dialogue balloons aren't full of street talk. He's an African king, from a fabulous fantasy realm as fully realized as Thor's Asgard or Superman's Metropolis: a wealthy, glittering, technological (but still spiritual) African country that has never been colonized by Europeans. And it's not just Wakanda's men who are super, either: Nyong'o, as Nakia, is a warrior woman for little girls to emulate (with a bit of training in judo, jujitsu and Filipino martial arts, that is).

As Nakia, Lupita Nyong'o is a warrior woman for little girls to emulate (with a bit of training in judo, jujitsu and Filipino martial arts).(Photo: Matt Kennedy/Marvel Studios-Disney via AP)

"Wakanda is not a real place, but it represents this power, this collective power, of the black imagination," Gayles said. "That's not something we've had before on this level, on this kind of stage. That's one of the reasons, among many, that people are responding [to this movie] the way they are."

A delicate dance

"Black Panther" is, of course, not aimed solely at African-American viewers. Part of its significance, at this moment, is that it was created with such a wide viewership in mind. Hollywood is literally banking on the assumption that a white kid, an Asian kid or a Latino kid in 2018 will be able to identify with these characters, wallow in the movie's fantasy world, and imagine himself — or herself — in the Black Panther's Vibranium suit (it absorbs the impact of bullets and explosions).

As the geek-o-sphere explodes with news of the first A-list black superhero movie, there 's been plenty of solidarity across the racial spectrum. "#WhatBlackPantherMeansToMe is the joy in seeing my black friends find a hero to represent them, their heritage, and their pride," one fan posted. "I will not see the movie the way they do or feel how they feel, and that's okay. Sometimes you should just be happy FOR other people."

There has also been grumbling in certain quarters. "Everything is race with these liberals," said one disgruntled observer online.

"Black Panther," to be clear, is hardly revolutionary. No $200 million mainstream movie can afford to offend any large segment of the public. But it is, by Hollywood standards, edgy. It's doing a delicate dance: appealing to the larger public while trying to keep faith with African-American fans, many of whom have waited their whole lives for this movie.

Chadwick Boseman in a poster for the film that self-consciously emulates a famous photo of a real life Black Panther, Huey P. Newton.(Photo: Matt Kennedy/Marvel Studios-Disney via AP)

There is a poster in which Boseman is posed very much like Huey P. Newton, founder of the real-life Black Panthers (which were not named after the comic book character and have nothing to do with him). Fans have been all over social media about it.

"Some of the marketing has invoked some of the Black Panther iconography," Gayles said. "There is this movie poster in which the king is sitting on his throne, sort of reclining to one side. There's an iconic picture of Huey Newton sitting in a very similar chair, and in one hand he holds a spear, and in the other one he holds a shotgun.

"If you do a Google search, I bet you'll come on the two images side by side," he said.

Almost certainly, it's not a coincidence, Gayles says. The marketers knew what they were doing.